


I'm with you in Rockland

by thermodynamicActivity (chlorinetrifluoride)



Series: The Collegestuck 'Verse [32]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Genderqueer Character, Humanstuck, Mental Health Issues, Non-Suicidal Overdose, Parent-Child Relationship, Schizoaffective Disorder, Schizophrenia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 15:39:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11211075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/thermodynamicActivity
Summary: You're Mituna Captor, and now that you've come out of the closet to your brother, the next person on your list is your mother. You don't think she'll be angry at you, but you're not certain of anything, really. You go all the way back to the home you grew up in. As you walk down these familiar streets, you reminisce. Good memories. Bad memories. Memories of old friends. Memories of family. You lose yourself in your head for a bit, but you do manage to tell your mother what she needs to know.And, as always, you just wish you could fix all her problems.(direct sequel to "ain't it just time to wake up and live?")





	I'm with you in Rockland

**Author's Note:**

> Since is a direct sequel to "ain’t it time to just wake up and live?", you should read that first (and possibly the fics suggested in that story), otherwise this fic won't make any sense whatsoever.
> 
> title and epigram borrowed from "howl"  
> since the "i'm with you in rockland" part of the poem refers to someone in a mental institution, i thought it'd be a good title for this fic.

_I’m with you in Rockland_ _  
_ _where you scream in a straightjacket that you’re losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss_

 _I’m with you in Rockland,_ _  
_ _where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse_

 _-_ Howl, Allen Ginsberg

* * *

 

**_June 5th, 2010 - Mituna Captor_ **

Instead of going home right after you’re finished your confession to Sollux, who is planning to meet Feferi at Union Square later, you take the subway all the way down to Sutter Avenue. Porrim and Calliope offer to come with you, but you refuse.  
  
After all, you’re returning to familiar surroundings.

That gives you some confidence.  
  
You walk the several blocks to Grafton St and Pitkin Ave, back to your first home. You call your mother before you reach the house, to make sure she’ll be there. Then you explain your identity and the concept of genderqueer to her to the best of your ability, over the phone, because you’re too terrified to do it in person.  
  
“I figured something like this,” she replies, but she doesn’t sound disappointed. She sounds… almost relieved? “Would you like something to eat when you get here?”  
  
“I’m good,” you reply.  
  
Your stomach is in too many knots to keep food down. You push your hair aside, and check your reflection in the pocket mirror Porrim gave you. Mismatched monolid eyes gaze at you, one brown, one blue, and both covered in dark eyeshadow, just as dark as it was when you left your apartment.

At least your makeup has held up on this hot ass day. That’s something.

Also, your brother isn’t ashamed of your identity in the least. That’s a hell of a lot of something. That may, in fact, be everything.

Now you have to see how your mother reacts. She sounded accepting enough on the phone. But what if she sees you and changes her mind after that? Her “son” in a women’s blouse and a pencil skirt? You have to be prepared for the worst.

As you walk down Grafton, you spy two familiar young men strolling down the sidewalk across the street from you, and in the opposite direction. You smile to see them. You missed them too, these old friends of yours, all of them fellow alumni of PS 221.

They’re talking shit, judging from their vehemence, and one of them has a basketball under his arm, which he occasionally dribbles down the block in the flashiest way possible. You already know who that one is. You’d know who he was even if you were turned around and couldn’t see him at all.

You can’t let them see you, because they’d have at least forty-five questions, some of which would be, “Is that who I think it is?”, “What the fuck?”, and/or “Someone wanna explain why my homeboy is wearing a dress?”

You want to duck into an alleyway, but unless you could climb an eight foot chain link fence - which you definitely could - there’s not one to be found. However, climbing a fence in a linen blouse and a pencil skirt is not the best way to remain inconspicuous.

They do not notice you noticing them immediately.

But once the darker young man sees and recognizes you, he stops short for a moment.

Then, he smiles and gives you a wave of acknowledgement. He does not point you out to the other man. Actions speak louder than words, do they not? Your secret is safe with him.

The guy who decided to keep his mouth shut is none other than Kwame Antwi, probably the only sensible person in your group of idiots who lived in East Flatbush, mere blocks away from each other. Kwame is soft-spoken and generally circumspect and contemplative. You have never known him to be unkind. He’s the first person in your group to have finished college: Medgar Evers class of 2010.

You and another friend, Antoine Jacquet, are not far behind. You’re going to finish in 2011, and he’s going to finish in 2012.

You went to Kwame’s graduation with the rest of the old crew. Okay, so you, Delonte, Lamar, Antoine, and Hakeem snuck in without tickets, wearing baggy jeans and t-shirts, but you all showed up, and you didn’t get busted, so there.

Unfortunately, you were dressed masc and that kind of pissed you off. Not because you really disliked what you had on, but because you _had_ to wear this sort of clothing, without having a choice in the matter. You had to dress like this to maintain your own safety. And you would have liked to live in a world where you had the ability to choose.

That wasn’t this world though, even if you want(ed) it to be.

Del and Antoine hooting and hollering when the guy on the stage called Kwame’s name brought you out of your blue study. Then you joined them, in making absolute fools of yourselves. College fucking graduate, this guy. You were so proud of him.

Once the commencement ceremony was over, and Kwame’s parents were done taking a million pictures of him with all his honor cords and shit, you told him that you’d see him on the graduate side next year.

(“You got this, Mituna,” he told you. “And you’re a senior, now. It’s all downhill from there.”

“Gotta write a fuckin’ honors thesis, man. For Physics.”

Kwame winced. “I stand corrected.”)

The other guy you notice, Delonte Howard, who continues dribbling his ball and talking shit to a severely bored looking Kwame, was almost as much of a hellraiser as you were back in ye olden times, before you started to drift apart when you went to vastly different high schools.

You think of 2004.

(“I can’t fucking go out with you guys over the weekend, Del. I got too much fucking homework to do,” you’d said. “I hate this fucking school. Maximum hate. Get me the fuck out of here.”

All of your teachers assigned homework like their class was the only one you were taking.

There was a long pause on Del’s end, and then he started to speak.

“My school has goddamn airport level metal detectors, like no AC, textbooks from 1975, and at least forty-something people in a classroom. You go to one of the best schools in the city, and I bet you don’t get any of that shit where you are,” Delonte shot back. “Monday, I saw public safety beat this kid down in the hallway last week, and he was bleeding all over the fucking place afterwards. He didn’t do shit to deserve that. Meanwhile, you’re mad about homework.”

“You’re right, y’know?” you admitted. “And I’m sorry, Del. I’m really sorry.”

“Nah, man, chill,” he told you. “I was just kinda pissed about shit. Shouldn’t’ve taken it out on you. But seriously, Tuna?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re a fucking genius,” he insists. “You got this.”

“Problem is, everyone in my school’s a fucking genius. So now I’m just average and tryna keep up.”

“Well, you got this ‘cause I said so, and I never been wrong in my life.”

“What about that time you thought that chick was totally into you?”

“Which one? A lot of the ladies want a piece of this.”

“The one who turned out to be a lesbian, and her AG girlfriend tried to beat the crap out of you for talking to her.” 

When that happened, you and Antoine were howling with laughter after it became clear that Del would not actually get beaten into a pulp. That was going down in history as the funniest thing you'd ever seen.

“You know what, Mituna? Fuck you.”

But there was no real malice in it. You could sense him grinning on the other side of the line.)

You think of 2002.

You and Del. One dumbass in cornrows, and another dumbass whose hair was nothing more than a black floof (and still is).

You two used to stand outside bodegas and use all your lunch money to try to bribe adults into buying you loosies. This worked more often than you expected it would, particularly with Antoine watching for cops, in exchange for a cigarette or two.

Since he was biracial and light enough to pass for white, he made a good lookout. Though you were Chinese, and the cops rarely, if ever, hassled you - they were usually too confused at the revelation that Asian people legitmately lived in Flatbush to do anything - you made a shitty lookout because you had and have the attention span of a goldfish.

Once Del got his smokes, he’d pass them among all of you equally, a triumphant grin on his face.

Moreover, you and he constantly got grounded simultaneously, by your respective parents, for some idiotic thing you’d done. One of the better ones was the day Delonte left homeroom and then pulled the fire alarm just to get out of a test on long division.

And they couldn’t prove he did it, since you insisted up and down that he was in the bathroom with you at the time, and you’d forged a halfway decent hall pass as evidence.

Everyone knew he did it. And everyone knew you were covering for him. So you got grounded until the end of the universe.

Because you couldn’t leave your block when you were grounded, and because your mother also forbade you from using the phone or the computer, you and Del had limited methods of communication. Maybe messenger pigeons, but those were extinct already.

Consequently, the two of you stood on the curbs of your respective sidewalks, and shouted conversations at each other, across Grafton Street. So long you kept both feet on your block, you technically weren’t breaking the rules. You wonder if he still lives across the street from your mother’s house. Wouldn’t that be some shit? Hiding from him because of what you’re wearing, just for him to stumble upon you on his walk home? That would be such a smooth move, it’d be practically frictionless.

Your phone pings, but you don’t answer until you get to your house. You sit down on the stoop, and pull out your phone, scanning the perimeter for anyone who might try to steal it. Then, you check your messages.

646: This is Mituna, right?  
917: N03P 157 73H G0DD4M 34573R 8UNNY  
917: H3R3 C0M35 P373R C0770N 74L3  
917: H0PP1NG D0WN 73H  
917: FUCK  
917: 1 F0RG0T 7H3 R357  
646: Ok  
646: This is definitely Mituna.  
917: WH0 73H FUCK 15 7H15  
917: 1F UR 4 0N3 N1GH7 574ND PL3453 C4LL M3 4ND R3F3R ALL UR PR41535 7W0 MY V01C3MA1L.  
646: It’s Kwame.  
917: 0 5H17 M4N WH475 UP  
646: Nothing much.  
646: I wanted to talk to you, and maybe hang out. It’s been a while.  
917: 0H N0  
646: ???  
917: 3V3RY71M3 50M30N3 54Y5 1 W4N7 7W0 74LK 7W0 U N07H1NG G00D 3V3R H4PP3N5  
646: Well, if you don’t want to meet up, I understand.  
917: 57FU 4ND C4LM UR 7175  
917: UR 571LL 4 H0M13 7H0 1M N07 G0NN4 1GN0R3 U  
917: L375 M337 UP 47 XO 47 L1K3 3 70M0RR0W  
646: XO?  
917: 175 1N CH1N470WN G00GL3 17  
917: 4L50  
917: 7H4NK5 F0R N07 8L0W1NG MY C0V3R 7W0 D3L  
646: You’re welcome, Mituna.  
646: For the record, I don’t think Delonte cares what you wear as long as you can still shoot a free throw in it.  
917: Y4  
917: MAY83

It’s more than just clothing, but you’re not going to tell Kwame that yet. Or ever. You haven’t decided.

One good thing, though? If Kwame’s only meeting with you to gawk at your appearance like you're on display, and not because he considers you a friend no matter what, you can just strand him at XO. The walk from there back to your apartment is relatively short.

You get up from the spot on your parents’ front steps, straighten out your clothes, and ring the doorbell. Thankfully, your mother’s the one to answer the door, instead of one of your cousins, most of whom are either working or sleeping. You don’t know if you can tell _everyone_ today.  
  
Your mother looks you over, and her smile does not diminish in the least. However, she seems somewhat dazed, like someone raised her medication dosage recently. She knows you just the same.  
  
“My Mituna,” she says, and as small as she is, despite the advancing grey in her hair, despite her spacey demeanor, her embrace comes as tight as ever. “You look beautiful. You have always….” She trails off. “You have always been beautiful.”

Tears well up in your eyes.

She looks like she wants to say something else, but cannot figure out what.  
  
You bend so you can rest your head in the juncture between her neck and shoulder.  
  
You let go of her, and she starts to sway in place, muttering things in Taishanese that you don’t really understand. Her eyes have gone glassy-glazed. Her head lolls forward a little.  
  
_Is all this heavy medication necessary for her schizophrenia?_   you ask yourself. _Does she need to be so sedated?_  
  
“Mom,” you say more adamantly.  
  
She gazes up at you again.  
  
“I’m sorry I’m not myself right now,” she says. “My doctors changed a few things around. Sollux could tell you about it. It’ll improve, though. I just need time to get used to it."  
  
You sort of want to cry. They’ve nearly turned your quick-witted mother into a zombie, all in the name of “recovery”. What sort of recovery is this, where she can barely string together a coherent sentence without gaps and confusion?  
  
_(Hello? Mom? Junling Captor? Anybody home? Anyone at all?)_  
  
This is imprisonment under the guise of progress, and the worst part is that the prison isn’t literal. You can’t bust her out and take her with you. All the metal bars and restraints exist within her mind.  
  
“How do you feel?” you ask her.  
  
She turns her head slowly to the left, and then to the right, as if someone might be listening to her responses.  
  
“I don’t know,” she says. “I…” She pauses. “It’s hard to remember. I don’t hear voices. My head’s so quiet, but it's hard to feel much of anything. Is that good? I can't tell.”  
  
You want to punch something, or call up her psychiatrist and curse at them for ten hours, but you keep yourself chill.  
  
You don’t answer her question, because you can’t. You get a nagging feeling that even stoned on psych meds, she can tell when you’re lying. She always could. She goes into the kitchen to put on some coffee. Technically, she’s not supposed to have any caffeine, but she says it helps to clear her head. And it does. When she’s finished her cup, she doesn’t look quite as likely to topple over.  
  
“Do you want me to come back when you’re feeling a little better?” you ask.  
  
Her hand darts forth, closing on your left wrist, her grip surprisingly strong.  
  
_“Don’t leave me, Mituna?”_ she asks. “Not yet. Not if you don’t have to.”

 _"I won't leave, Mom,"_ you promise.  
  
You think the last time you told her that, of sixth grade and her last major breakdown.  
  
First, she disappeared for over 60 hours.  
  
On the second day of her disappearance, when she still hadn’t come home, your father took you and Sollux down to the 67th precinct, to file a missing person report.

You had to do most of the translation for him. He was so tired and worried, and his English was always worse when he was stressed out.  
  
Once you gave them a physical description of your mother, down to her heterochromia, you had a few more things to add.  
  
“She’s really sick, like mentally, and she didn’t take her meds with her when she left,” you related. “Please don’t hurt her, though. She doesn’t mean any harm.”  
  
Day three, and she turned up, seeming downright lucid, given the state she was in when she just up and left. She’d gone out in nothing but a thin, torn sweater and a pair of leggings, and this was the middle of winter. Colder than Frosty the Snowman’s frigid taint. Everyone was scared she’d frozen to death or something.

But then, she unlocked the doors, took off her shoes, went into the kitchen, and started making breakfast, which she then threw out, because the eggs were full of lethal substances. She could just  _tell._

At least she was home. 

Your cousin Zixin, the closest to you in age, sighed, and made breakfast instead. He put you and Sollux’s portions of breakfast in your lunchboxes, instead of having you eat at the table. If your mom saw you eating “poisoned” food, she might have thrown a fit.

When you got home from school, your second-youngest cousin, Xiaoqing was sitting on the couch, with your mother sitting on the floor, trying her best to untangle the woman’s hair.

“When was the last time you combed this out?” she asked.

“I…” Your mother stopped to think. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Carefully, Xiaoqing coaxed the knots from your mother’s hair. A few minutes later, your mother started to cry, smacking your cousin in the leg with the back of her hand.

“You’re hurting me. Stop that. Please.”

“Sorry, Auntie,” she said. “You have to try to stay still. Then I can get this done faster.”

Your mother shook her head repeatedly.

“Why won’t you just leave me alone?” 

Your cousin sighed. “Someone has to help you.” She turned to you. “Mituna, go upstairs to your room and do your homework.”

You didn’t need to be told twice.

“Got it."

You had your foot on the second step when your mother started screaming again.

“No, fuck you! Why are you trying to take my son from me?”

“He’s just going upstairs to do his homework,” Xiaoqing said gently. “Remember, you told him that he needed to study more? You always tell him that.”

“Mituna, come back! Don’t listen!”

You walked up the stairs even faster. Sollux poked his head out of the room you two shared and murmured something like, “what the fuck?” 

“Sai lo, don’t ask questions you don’t actually want answers to.”

Eventually, your mother fell into an uneasy silence, and maintained that uneasy silence.

As you and Sollux tried to study, you two listened carefully to what was going on downstairs. This went on for a while.

However, your mother surprised you by being largely calm for the next several days. Not lucid, no, she was still convinced people were out to kill her. But she wasn’t combative, and she didn’t shout or curse.

You knew it couldn’t last. She still wasn’t eating properly. Sollux had to trick her into eating a meal or two, which was good for her, but bad for their relationship. She stopped trusting him. She pronounced him “just like the others.”

He told you that if he had it to do over, he would. He’d keep her safe, even if she hated him. Even if she never got better, and stayed hating him.

On day four of her being back home, he came up with an idea, which he explained to you. What’s the easiest way to prove that there’s nothing dangerous in food? Have someone test it first. And since you were the only person in your house that your mother trusted unconditionally, except for maybe her sister, who was usually at work, that task fell to you.

When you attempted to implement your plan, she tried to wrest the bowl from your hands, unwilling to let you poison yourself. She looked as if she wanted to smack you. Hard. Even though she'd never raised her hand at you before.

You ate half the porridge, and then slid the bowl over to her.

“See, Mama? No poison.”

She stared at you for almost half an hour, waiting for you to keel over or start bleeding from the mouth. When neither of those things happened, she ate a cursory spoonful, and then devoured the remainder. She must have been really hungry. Well, no shit, she was hungry. She hadn't eaten in ages.

“Don’t let me die, Mituna?” she asked, scraping the bowl with her spoon to get the last of the food out of it.

“I won’t. I promise.”

(You always made so many promises to your mother when was sick like this. But, since life is a circle, a few years later, you'd be demanding certain promises of your own. From Porrim, from Latula, from Kurloz, from Callie, from whomever happened to be around.

"Are you sure I won't drown in the shower?"

"Will you protect me from the people in my linalg class? They can _read_ my _mind_.")

Two more days passed.

When you and Sollux were supposed to be sleeping, you were actually eavesdropping on the conversation taking place between your father and your older, middle-aged relatives, like always. The youngish ones weren’t invited to the discussion.

“We can’t keep her here, like this,” your father said. “There isn’t much we can do for her at this point.”

“So you’re going to just throw your wife into an asylum?” your aunt Junmei asked. “How could you entertain such an idea?”

“I would never put her in a place like that,” your father said, sounding angrier than you’d ever heard him get. “However, I would sign her into a hospital, somewhere she can stay for a few weeks, until her head’s back in order.”

Faint murmuring, all around. You strained to hear what they were saying.

“Junling’s head was _never_ in order,” a male cousin pointed out. “It’ll probably never be in order, hospital or not.”

"Isn't he the supreme fucking optimist?" you'd muttered, clapping a hand over Sollux's mouth before he could burst out laughing.

“And she’ll be locked up, and you know they won’t let her children visit,” Junmei added, unconvinced of your father’s logic.“No way out, if she wants to leave. And what happens if they can’t treat her? What if nothing works? Do they keep her indefinitely? Do you even know?”

By then, you and Sollux were practically hanging halfway over the railing so you could hear everything. If anyone had bothered to look up, they would have seen you easily.

“I don’t,” he replied honestly.

“So why put my sister through all of that? At least here, we know her. We can protect her. You're not even trying to act in her best interest!”

“I get what you're saying, but I also know this,” your father started out, his tone laden with tranquil fury. “This time of the year, in terms of the weather, the highs are around twenty, and the lows are in the single digits. We got lucky when she came back from wherever she was, in one piece. But if she wanders out again, into that kind of cold, we may not get lucky again."

He paused to take a sip of water. "Ultimately, it comes down to whether you’d rather your sister end up in the psych ward for a month or two, or have to identify her body in the morgue, if she dies of hypothermia.”

You and Sollux exchanged “holy shit” glances. Your father only really let people have it twice a decade, but when he did, oh man, did he ever.

Then, a shouting match started between your aunt and your father, the latter of whom you had never heard shout, or even raise his voice. Once you got over your shock, Sollux, being himself, muttered something like, “rock paper scissors over who has to get popcorn from the kitchen.”

None of these circumstances should have been funny, but you and Sollux were terrible individuals, and your family so uniquely dysfunctional that it was either laugh or have an anxiety attack.

Then, you heard footsteps moving toward the living room, and really hoped they didn't belong to your mother. You didn’t hear any raving or crying, so probably not.

Instead, you heard a young woman who had become stridently indignant at the current state of affairs.

“I get that you guys are having a serious discussion but could you please lower the fuc--.. I mean, uh, lower your volume?” Xiaoqing asked. “Some of us are trying to study for the MCAT, and get actual work done. And I have two exams tomorrow!”

She subsequently got scolded from five different directions for not showing proper deference to her elders. One good thing came of it. Your father and aunt stopped arguing. While Xiaoqing was getting the lecture of the century, standing calmly like she’d heard this a million times before, she looked right up at you and Sollux, and winked.

Had that been her plan all along?

Probably.

And as for your mother? The next day, you and pretty much everyone else in the house were counting down hours until the next time she had to see her psychiatrist. Maybe they'd be able to do something, you’d figured. Increase her meds, try her on different ones, or send her to a locked unit for a while. Something like that.

Yeah, no. That was not even slightly how it happened. No medication adjustments, no nothing. Furthermore, you had no idea how your mom managed to talk her way out of an inpatient hospitalization, but she did. Everyone in your house tiptoed around her, for the most part, after that, scared of setting her off. That actually worked pretty well for a while.  
  
Even so, everything came to a head on a Saturday afternoon, when you invited Porrim, Kanaya, and Karkat to watch shitty movies (Star Wars prequels level shitty) with you and Sollux. You skipped over inviting Kankri because you couldn’t stand him.

Your friends each had their own ulterior motives for making their way into your utterly unsafe neighborhood, and into your dilapidated house crammed with too many people.

Porrim and Kanaya came over because Porrim hated her father and Kanaya didn’t want to be alone in the house with just him and her mother. Karkat came over because he hated his parents and Kankri with an absolute totality. They lectured at length and never let him get a word in edgewise, and they wouldn't let him curse. (Oh, the horror.) Also, Sollux invited Karkat over despite the fact that all they fucking did was argue. You’d made a bet with yourself (and later, Porrim) that they were so totally gay for each other. Except you both thought they were gay for each other, so you weren't sure how you'd partition the bet money.  
  
Halfway through Sollux’s irreverent commentary on The Phantom Menace, and saying that Qui-Gon Jinn should just force punch his superiors, you heard a lot of commotion downstairs.

A crash, the sound of something shattering, a scream, then a woman yelling and wailing.

“Don’t touch me! Get away from me! I know what you’re trying to do!” your mother shouted. “And I’m not going to let you!”  
  
Sollux went as pale as milk.

Porrim, Karkat, and Kanaya, though concerned, seemed more confused than anything. They couldn’t understand what your mother was saying, although her tone came through loud and clear.  
  
You told your friends (and little brother) to get the hell out of your house, because something bad was about to happen. You could sense it, like the petrichor in the air before a bit of drizzle turns into a fucking monsoon.

“What about Mom?” Sollux asked you.

“I’m gonna fucking sort it, okay?” you replied. You were the older brother. It was your job to sort shit, not his. “Just get out of here for a while. Go to Karkat's. Stay there until I tell you to come back. Do you understand?”

Sollux told you to go fuck yourself, but listened to you nevertheless. Kanaya grabbed Karkat by the back of his shirt collar, and Sollux by his arm, dragged them downstairs, and out the back door of your house.

Porrim stayed exactly where she was, sitting cross-legged on the floor.  
  
“Didn’t I tell you to get out?” you asked.  
  
“I’m not leaving you. Remember what you told me?”

“What I told you about what? I tell you all kinds of shit.”

“You told me I didn’t have to be alone with my problems,” she said. “Think that over.”

You rolled your eyes, but didn’t try to throw her out again.  
  
“Right then. Stay upstairs at least. Whatever's going on down there isn't something you want to see.”

“Okay, Tuna,” Porrim said.

She took her Social Studies book out of her bag, and started filling in answers to her homework assignment.

Fucking Pomary. Only she would bring homework to movie day.  
  
You followed the sound of shouting and arguing into the kitchen, where your mother was throwing plates and bowls at your cousins and father. Each time your father tried to reason with her, she’d relax for a minute or two, and then start screaming again. To be fair, if you thought your whole family was trying to murder you, or whatever, you'd be screaming too.

She’d sat down on the floor and had backed herself up against the cabinet below the kitchen sink, kicking at anyone who tried to pick her up. Bits of broken crockery and pills were strewn around her, a pill bottle lying at her feet, on its side.

You picked it up and read it.

_Clozapine, 200 mg._

And once your mother saw you, she got this pleading look in her eyes.  
  
“Mituna! Mituna, please, you have to help me!” She pointed an accusatory finger at the family members surrounding her. “They’re trying to kill me!”  
  
You sat down next to her on the tile floor, so you and she would be eye-level. She took hold of your shoulders. You combed an idle hand through her hair in an attempt to calm her.  
  
“What happened?” you asked gently. “I’m not gonna hurt you, Mom. I just need to know what’s going on.”  
  
“Doctor said if I took my meds, I’d get better,” she replied. “But it didn’t work. So I took more, and I’m not better. And now everyone’s trying to hurt me.” She gave you an almost childlike look of desperation. “Will you help me?”  
  
“She overdosed,” your father informed you, standing above you two. “We need to do something.”

Yeah, yeah, he was right. But before that, you had to do something of your own. You were not particularly renowned for your common sense when you were twelve, or ever, but you started counting up the pills left on the floor. You counted forty in total, and recalled that she got her full prescription three days ago.  
  
You know this for a fact, because you had to go to the drugstore yourself to get her script filled, and since that drugstore closed at 8 PM - it was 9:20 - you had to go on a fucking quest to find one that was open. You would have sooner taken a journey to Mordor. It would have probably been shorter.

You read the bottle over again, looking at how many pills there were to start with. If she’d been prescribed sixty, and had at least forty leftover, that meant she couldn’t have taken more than twenty, which was still an awful lot of pills.   
  
Your father was right. You needed to help get her somewhere they could monitor her and try to bring her back to her right mind. Or within shouting distance of her right mind. Somehow.  
  
She began to rock back and forth, as if she could anticipate your thoughts, as if she knew where you were planning to take her.

You put your hand on her leg to steady her.  
  
Then, you looked up, and saw Porrim standing in the doorway of your kitchen, having disobeyed you, much to your utter lack of surprise.  
  
You mouthed the words “Call 911” to her, and after seeing all the broken shit in your kitchen, and the pill bottle on the floor, she understood.  She pulled out her cell phone and left the room.  
  
“Mom?” you asked. “Mom, I’m going to get you someplace where you can get help. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you. Do you understand?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“You trust me, right?”  
  
She nodded, her eyes tracking your movements. Then she moved abruptly, struck the back of her hand against the cabinet by accident, and began to cry.  
  
“You won’t let them hurt me?”  
  
“I would never,” you replied.  
  
You told everyone else in the kitchen - except your father and aunt - to clear the fuck out and give your mother some air. You got up to find your own cell phone, but your mother refused to let go of your hand.  
  
_“Don’t leave me, Mituna.”_  
  
You sat back down and held the small woman in your arms.  
  
“I won’t leave, Mom. I won’t leave,” you promised. “I’m right here.”  
  
“Where’s Sollux?” she asked. “Is he safe? Did anything happen to him? I told you two to stay away from that television.”

(Yeah, yeah, stay away from the subliminal messages on ABC.)

“He’s at the library,” you lied.

You honestly had no fucking idea exactly where he was. You knew where he was headed, not where he was at this moment in time. However, he had Kanaya and Karkat with him, so it wasn’t like he was wandering the streets alone.  
  
When the ambulance arrived, while the first responders assessed her, your mother brandished a sharp piece of a broken plate at one of the EMTs.

They had to put her in serious restraints, and give her some kind of sedative, because she kept trying to fight them.

And she was winning.

One of them asked for her history, and wanted to know what she took. Your aunt told them everything she knew. You told them all that you knew.

Your aunt put her hand on her your mother’s head.

“It’s going to get better,” she said. "I'll come visit you. Every day. Every _single_ day. They'll get tired of seeing me. I love you, mui mui."

"I'm scared, jeh-je," your mother confessed. "I'm so scared. Help me. Please."

Your aunt began to cry, turning away to wipe at her face.  
  
Even with your mother quite sedated, once the EMTs started wheeling her out on a stretcher she began to scream again, an almost inhuman sound of anguish, confusion, and fear all overlain atop each other. She thrashed against her restraints, determined to free herself by any means necessary.  
  
“Mituna! Junmei!“ she shouted. “Don’t let them kill me! You have to save me! You’re the only ones who believe me!”

Your aunt just watched solemnly, doing nothing, even as your mother screamed for help in Cantonese.   
  
You, being you, would have rode with your mother all the way to the hospital, if your father hadn’t put a hand on you shoulder to hold you back.  
  
Still, even he couldn’t keep you in line. Nobody could keep you in line, if you didn’t want to be there.

You dashed to the ambulance, and managed to take hold of your mother’s hand one final time, before half your family pulled you away from her, and the EMTs closed the back doors. The ambulance started to move, sirens warbling down your block, and away.

(If you'd known that was the last time you'd see her for seventeen weeks, you would have fought harder. And cried harder.)  
  
“I’m sorry,” you murmured to her, even though she couldn’t hear you anymore.

In the background, your father thanked Porrim for calling 911. 

You knelt down in the street where the vehicle had been, refusing to move, tears streaming down your face. You'd failed to protect your mother. You made a strangled, somewhat incoherent sound.  
Porrim took hold of your arm, and helped you up. She said not a word. She merely stood next to you, and held your hand for a while.  
  
“That's what I never told you about my mother,” you said to her, once you were more or less calm. “Sometimes, she gets very sick. Like that.” You lower voice. "Sometimes, I have problems like hers. I don't want to get like that."

Porrim doesn't judge you. Instead, she tries to reassure you. She kisses you on the forehead.  
  
“They'll be able to take care of her, Mituna. The doctors will help her. It'll work out, all of it will work out," she insists.  
  
You didn’t know about that.  
  
Several years down the line, and you still don’t know about that.  
  
In the present day, your overmedicated mother leads you up the stairs to her room. The caffeine has perked her up, but you’re still concerned that she’ll sway a little too hard and fall down.  
  
“Mom?” you ask. “Where are we going?”  
  
“I have things to give you,” she says. “Important things.”  
  
“Like?”  
  
She smiles and opens the door. “Patience, Mituna. You’ll see.”

Now, she sounds more like herself.

Once you two are in her room, she pulls out a few dresses. You’re 95% sure that none of them will fit you. You’re tall, and somewhat broad-shouldered, even if you are skinny.  
  
Meanwhile, your mom is petite and slight, built like Calliope.  
  
“These were my mother’s, first. Then, they were mine. Now…” She pauses again. “Now, they’re yours, but come to think of it, they’re probably too small. No matter.”

She takes several more dresses, skirts, and blouses out of the hallway closet. These are larger. They might actually fit you.

“Your cousin doesn’t want them anymore,” she explains. “When you told me about…” Pause. “When you told me about yourself, I thought that maybe you’d like to have them. I’m glad I kept them around.”

You hug her.

“Thank you.”  
  
She opens the top drawer of her bureau, and pulls out all sorts of makeup. You and she are almost identical in complexion, as she points out, after half a minute of being spaced out. When you want  to wear makeup, you can probably wear this. She puts all the compacts and brushes and bottles into a plastic bag, and gives it to you.  
  
“I don’t wear makeup the way I used to. You might be able to use it, though,” she goes on.

"Thank you."

She cups your face with one hand. “I wish I could give you more. I wish I could give you so much more.”  
  
You have a feeling she’s not just talking about the contents of the bag, or the clothes on her bed.  
  
“You don’t have to,” you reply. “This is just fine.”  
  
You hug her again.

She gets a little stern-faced with you once you let go.

“You’re still; taking care of yourself, right?” she asks. “Eating, sleeping, going to class, all that...? And taking your medication? You need to take your meds. I don't want you to end up in a _bad place._ ”

That's how she refers to the psych ward. The first time you did, the way Zijie relates it, she fainted straightaway when she heard.

“Yes, I'm taking my meds, Mom. One of my roommates reminds me to.”

“Which one? Is it the uh…?” She spaces out for a moment. “The girl, right?”

“I live with _two_ women. You're going to have to specify which one."

“The one who used to come here all the time? With the gold rings in her face? She was such a nice girl.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s Porrim. She's practically my medication alarm.”

Your mother nods.

“You and your roommates should come over for dinner, if you have the time, and when I’m more like myself,” she says. “I’ll make everything… everything you like. I guess? I’ve forgotten your favorites, I’m sorry.”

You tell her not to apologize.

Privately, you think that you’re going to find her psychiatrist and jam your foot so far up their ass, they’ll be able to taste your insole.

And in terms of having your little Chinatown group over here for dinner, you doubt you're going to let that happen. Your family’s chronically broke as fuck. Making the limited amount of food that they can afford stretch eight ways is hard enough. You can’t imagine what an imposition it would be for you, Porrim, Callie and Kurloz to eat that food.

Furthermore, your family is polite and prideful enough that its members would never admit they couldn’t afford something in front of guests.

“Mom, you really don’t have to,” you say. “Really.”

She gently flicks you in the forehead. It’s something she used to do when you were a kid, and you lost sight of whatever you were supposed to be paying attention to.

“You’re thinking of money, aren’t you?” she says “But they’ve restored my SSDI. I have a little, um… a little more than I used to.”

She barely made jack shit on SSDI, so...

“Holy shit, Mom, you’re rich. We’re practically middle class, now,” you joke.

She blinks, perplexed, not understanding that you’re just screwing around.

You sit down next to her on her bed, and put your head in her lap like the old days. That gets the smile you wanted out of her. She begins to sing you a lullaby, one you remember from your early, early childhood, before Sollux was even a concept.   
  
Years of smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day have somewhat diminished her voice, but you recognize the tune just the same. You recognize your mother, sane or insane.

You recognize her, and you love her more than you can express.


End file.
